Social Memory in the Life Space of Socium

The article discusses modern problems of inheritance and perception of the past from the standpoint of the categorical apparatus of social philosophy. The conceptual bases of the analysis are connected with the comprehension of the heuristic possibilities of the concepts “social space”, “living space”. When analyzing the ontology of social space, three types of spatial relationships should be considered: institutional, spatial-stratification and civilizational. Virtually and spiritually mastered by people, the natural and social space becomes the life space of the society. The concept of social memory, presented in the author’s previous works, develops in the article on the basis of an analysis of the three cognitive horizons of perception of the past. The traditionalist horizon is revealed in the phenomena and categories of everyday culture, where on the basis of traditions a common attitude to the past is formed. In transitive risk-based societies, traditions cease to be conditions for the consolidation of people’s life experience, in connection with this the living space of social memory is simplified, and the influence on culture is reduced. The communication horizon of the reproduction of the past expresses the ability of subjects to overcome the crisis of ordinary ideas about history. In the concepts of “information taxon”, “communication risk”, a positive direction of the impact of information flows of social memory on the living space of society is revealed. The global horizon of social memory reveals a new configuration of the temporal structures of society, where a breakthrough into the future is accompanied by an increase in the problems of perception of the past, caused by the transformation of ways of storing information about the past. Gradual strengthening of the role of universal values in the spiritual life of the world community will contribute to the improvement of the main horizons of the social memory of modern society.